Yahoo Finance How a Miami 'fixer' got his hooks into Britain’s white collar crime agency
Across the road from Miami’s famous, exotic-looking Vagabond Motel sits an unremarkable four-storey office.
The building, walking distance from some of Frank Sinatra’s favourite night-time haunts, is the registered headquarters of Five Stones Intelligence, an obscure private investigator’s outfit - though it does not say this on the door.
Just a few years ago, almost no one in Britain’s law enforcement agencies had heard of the company, or its founder David Tinsley.
But Tinsley - described as a well-connected “fixer” - has since emerged as a key figure of intrigue in a scandal that has rocked the top echelons of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
The former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent’s involvement in the SFO’s investigation into Unaoil - and the failure of the prosecutors, including director Lisa Osofsky, to properly disclose their contacts with him - resulted in the quashing of two bribery convictions and an official review.
Amid the fiasco, the biggest winners seem to be Tinsley’s clients, the Ahsanis, who are no longer targeted by UK officials.
Saman and Cyrus Ahsani, the two brothers behind Unaoil’s global bribery network, have instead pleaded guilty in the US, where they are cooperating with authorities, to paying bribes to officials in Africa and the Middle East. They are awaiting sentencing.
An official review on the saga is expected imminently from Sir David Calvert Smith, the former High Court judge appointed to do so by Suella Braverman, the Attorney General.
Questions remain about the extent of Tinsley’s work with the SFO, including whether he assisted prosecutors on cases other than Unaoil.
Lloydette Bai-Marrow, a former SFO prosecutor and partner at Parametric Global Consulting, says: "For those working in law enforcement, there is an established framework for who you usually engage with.
“The interactions between David Tinsley and the SFO are unlike anything I have ever come across in my career, because he does not fit into any of those categories.
“That should have raised alarm bells and there should have been an increased level of caution around any dealings with him, to ensure that it stood up to scrutiny.
“Instead, this resulted in the unravelling of what should have been two successful prosecutions.”
Tinsley got in touch with the SFO as the British agency was still reeling from a turf war with the US Department of Justice, which had secured the cooperation of the Ahsani brothers through a plea deal.
Washington’s move was seen as a betrayal by prosecutors in London, who felt they should have primacy over the Ahsanis - British citizens who were schooled here.
It left the SFO bereft of its top suspects in the Unaoil case just as Osofsky, a former FBI lawyer, took over as the agency’s director at the end of August 2018.
Tinsley contacted Osofsky through a mutual friend, to whom she passed on her details using her private email address, according to court documents.
By September 21 they were texting each other, with Tinsley saying he would “would love to meet privately first to provide some background”.
Osofsky replied: “Sounds great David… Super honoured that you’re coming my way.”
The SFO director’s enthusiasm can perhaps be explained by Tinsley's reputation, at least on the other side of the Atlantic.
During his 21-year career at the DEA, Tinsley had led a team at the agency’s Miami office that flipped a string of Colombian drug cartel bosses, known by law enforcement agencies as “narcos”.
One of the biggest fish they hooked was Orlando Sanchez Cristancho, a top lieutenant of the Cali Cartel, who Tinsley and his colleagues secreted out of Panama - with help from the CIA - aboard a Hawker 700 private jet.
But his decorated service was not without controversies, with Tinsley suspended in 2000 over alleged misconduct when handling an informant.
He appealed and was reinstated in 2004, when an administrative judge threw out the main charges. The judge ruled Tinsley had a “superb” reputation, had passed a lie-detector test and was trustworthy. A few minor infractions of the rules were only the result of his “excess zeal” and “hands on” style, the judge added.
Even so, Tinsley left the DEA in 2008 to start his own investigative outfit: Five Stones. For recruits, he turned to former colleagues as well as veterans of the Miami police, the FBI, CIA and American military.
A devout Christian, Tinsley’s company bills itself as “the world's first Judeo-Christian private intelligence Agency Service” and is named after the rocks that David, a shepherd boy, stows in his pouch before battling Goliath in the classic Old Testament story.
The firm appears to have initially focused on protecting churches, synagogues, schools and businesses from security threats before branching out, boasting an impressive list of customers that includes the US Department of Justice.
Although Five Stones works in the shadows, its publicised successes include the role it played in uncovering the Russian olympic doping scandal, working for the World Anti-Doping Agency, as well as uncovering a US doping scandal for the Jockey Club.
One lawyer defending a suspect in the Jockey Club scandal, however, accused Tinsley’s firm of using “aggressive, unlawful tactics in an attempt to coerce witnesses into incriminating others in the industry”.
Tinsley has dismissed the allegations as “totally false”.
But it was perhaps for his tenacious style that the Ahsanis turned to Tinsley when they became the key targets of British and American prosecutors in the Unaoil investigation.
Soon after he got in touch with Osofsky, Tinsley began trying to persuade the SFO to rescind arrest warrants for the Ahsani brothers, while simultaneously offering to help the agency secure guilty pleas for other, more junior Unaoil defendants British prosecutors were seeking to bring to trial.
These defendants, Basil Al-Jarah and Ziad Akle, as well as Paul Bond, were charged with involvement in the Unaoil bribery scheme, in which the company helped oil companies secure lucrative contracts in countries such as Iraq by bribing government officials.
Tinsley is said to have approached Al-Jarah and Akle for talks about their pleas, despite not representing either of them. He claims he was approached first by Akle and Al-Jarah.
During the meetings, which took place without lawyers present, Tinsley boasted of his relationship with Osofsky and suggested he could demonstrate his clout with the SFO with a delay to an upcoming court hearing in the UK, according to Akle’s lawyers.
He also continued to talk to Osofsky and some of her senior colleagues, including lead investigator Kevin Davis. Not all of these discussions were fully documented.
In one of his exchanges with Osofsky, Tinsley emailed: “Mercy means valuing relationships over rules”.
“Inspiring,” Osofsky wrote back.
Texts were also exchanged between Davis and Tinsley but were deleted when Davis repeatedly entered an incorrect code into his work phone.
In a separate email revealed in a tribunal, Davis appeared to suggest Tinsley and the Ahsanis could help the SFO with follow up investigations.
"Just had a very productive one to one with DT and a taster of potential criminal conduct by [redacted] (non [Unaoil] related),” he emailed Osofsky. “If this goes right I think our man will provide us with a valuable stream of potential casework."
In April 2019, the SFO wrote to the Ahsani brothers to confirm it was dropping the investigation into them. Three months later, Al-Jarah pleaded guilty to bribery charges.
However, Akle, who had recorded his conversations with Tinsley, pleaded innocent and argued in court that Tinsley’s entreaties amounted to an abuse of process by the SFO. This was dismissed and Akle was found guilty of bribery.
He challenged the ruling, with Court of Appeal judges overturning his conviction last December and ruling the lack of information provided by the SFO about Tinsley had deprived Akle of a fair trial.
Bond, who had also been found guilty of bribery offences, successfully appealed on similar grounds.
In the Akle ruling, appeal judges said: “Tinsley was the last person whom the SFO should have allowed, or caused, to undertake the role of trying to persuade Basil Al-Jarah and Akle to plead guilty.”
Sue Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, says the appearance of “back room deals” between the SFO and Tinsley had echoes of when the agency was dubbed the “Serious Farce Office” under former director Richard Alderman.
“The real danger now is that the SFO becomes more and more risk averse, leaving a void where corporate crime essentially goes unpunished.”
The SFO said it would be inappropriate to comment, but said: “We are cooperating fully with Sir David Calvert-Smith’s review.”
A spokesman refused to say whether prosecutors had worked with Tinsley on investigations other than Unaoil. Tinsley also declined to comment, citing his ongoing work for the Ahsanis.
For now, it means the full story of the SFO’s work with Tinsley will remain partly obscured by shadows - just like the man himself.
